Arizona almost killed your access to supplements

Whether or not you are crazy enough to live in Arizona, you should know that The Arizona Board of Pharmacy was reaching out its tentacles to other States which supply their residents and stores with vitamins and supplements, trying to kill off this business.

Photo credit – Fred Moore via Flickr

The Arizona State Board of Pharmacy recently began interpreting its authority in a manner that implies that virtually every company that manufacturers or sells dietary supplements in the state will need to register as a nonprescription drug facility. If the Arizona board were successful and persistent in this approach, it could have significantly disrupted the dietary supplement business in the state.

The board was communicating a position that companies selling dietary supplements in Arizona be required to register as either a resident or nonresident “wholesaler of nonprescription drugs” if any of their supplement products provide DSHEA-authorized statements of nutritional support. This new interpretation of the Arizona Pharmacy Act would have apparently appled to all companies doing business in the state, whether located in Arizona or elsewhere. If applied consistently, this interpretation could also require each supplement manufacturer to register as a “drug manufacturer,” and every retailer in Arizona that sells supplements to register as a “nonprescription drug retailer.”

As their name implies – The Arizona State Board of Pharmacy – is there to protect their pharmaceutical buddies and kill off the competition (health food supplements).

The AHPA (American Health Products Association) President Michael McGuffin sent a lettter to the Arizona Pharmacy Board stating, “AHPA requests the board recognize that supplements that make claims that are lawful under Federal regulation are not nonprescription drugs and cannot be regulated as drugs in Arizona.”

If you folks think this is nuts, it really is not. This is part of a long-term very well-organized effort by the pharmaceutical industry to eliminate competition by legislation, influencing regulators (many of whom they helped appoint or rehire after their government “service”), and pressuring the FDA (who also contain members of the pharmaceutical industry who are on loan helping to write and interpret their regulations.)

As an update — During a December 5, 2018 meeting the AZ Board of Pharmacy began the process to eliminate the language from the Arizona Administrative Code and restricting the Arizona Board of Pharmacy’s jurisdiction over dietary supplements. Disease claims made by dietary supplement products will remain under the jurisdiction of the FDA and the FTC, and both NPA and AHPA support prompt and consistent enforcement by these Federal agencies against marketers who make unlawful disease claims.

So we must always remain vigilant.

Okay, to get as far away from the crazies in Arizona’s Board of Pharmacy, what better place than to to take a dive than off the coast of Belize and swim among the nurse sharks. These guys may look scary, but they have very small teeth. They feed by suctioning food from bottom reefs into their mouthes. However, they have been known to occasionally bite divers who have been overly annoying. Maybe we can send a few to Arizona.